Future updates for crafters.

While leveling my leatherworker today I had enough time to think about crafting. It's my 3rd craft on level 50 now and some points are simply wrong. I'm playing the game with my girlfriend together and she is grinding dungeons most of the time. I got a bit worried when I saw that she can walk out of those dungeons with green and pink gear and not a single crafter was involved. Why not getting green and pink materials in dungeons which crafters can turn into green and pink gear. The reason is obviously that SE wanted rewards for people doing dungeons and selling materials on the AH does not feel rewarding enough. So they can't really fix this without making people who grind dungeons all day upset. But what's the point of HQ gear when dungeons hand out green and pink,gear to battle classes. The only point left is the easiness to obtain HQ items as long you have the Gil.

Another thing is that I crafted every piece of gear alone for my leatherworker. But sometimes it felt really useless. For example you can sometimes craft body armor every two levels and it adds just a bit improvement to your class. Now it's not hard to get two levels as crafter in FFXIV so you just start to skip certain pieces for a few levels. This only underlines the problem every crafter knows. People outlevel most stuff too fast and items don't really have a value. But what can SE do? Gimp the leveling process for everyone? No the rage at SE would be too big. But crafters can't get involved this way.

Another thing are FATEs. While it's cool that you can get fast XP, FATEs don't require the best equipment to get some XP since mobs die very fast in the crowd anyways. There is no reason to get decent lower level gear. But again I can't see anything to change that, because people want easy leveling.

In general I think that SE won't do alot for crafters in the near future. The crowd requesting new dungeons is too big and therefore something like crafting will be at the end of the priority list. It feels like crafters mostly profit on other crafters who level up. It does not really feel like crafters are needed by battle classes since most items can be acquired in dungeons.

Obviously this is just my opinion, but I'd like to know how you wish SE would get crafters more involved. Is there a good way without stealing the feeling of reward from battle classes?

Dungeon Pink is just a drop in the bucket.

Go run Battlecraft, levequests for 40 or so points. I was doing it on a Whm and while I only got 2 pieces for Whm, I got a 40-41 Aetherial bow, Lancers halberd, Thaum weap, Mythril chest plate, DoW belt, helmet, gloves and nothing I craft can hold a candle to them. In addition I didn't need to roll on them. Just open the box.

If you prefer, head over to your GC officer. He has head to toe gear equal to HQ crafted and you will cap out on seals farming FATE runs anyway so use it up.

Hope for better with housing. Right now we are 550 levels of fluff.

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Originally Posted by Ksenia

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Until you start getting iLVL70+ gear, literally everything crafted is better. The HQ versions have the same stats as their dungeon equivalents, but you can meld them, which effectively makes them outclass (very easily) the dungeon drops. I'm open to debate, but I am unsure that you will be able to find an example of gear below iLVL70+ that doesn't have a better crafted counterpart. And 2* HQ crafted gear beats the ever living hell out of GC gear.

I doubt they'll be better in all situations. While yes, HQ gear essentially has potentially better stats than a poorly rolled Aetherial item, luck out and you might get an Aetherial item with very high numbers in 3 different secondary stats. I have an Aetherial Woolen Robe in my armoury chest which is sitting at like 10 points in the primary three stats for casters and another 15 each in Spell Speed/Accuracy/Determination. I doubt that even a pentamelded HQ Woolen Robe would outperform that. :p

But still dungeon gear is free and many players don't even bother with melding in lower levels. As mentioned, the leveling process is too fast and you often wear a certain piece of gear only a few levels so why putting any extra gil into it? With crafters and gatheres this is different they actually need crafted gear because there are not alot of sources to get it for free.

I just used dungeon gear mostly when leveling up, but now that I'm a high level crafter, it feels great being able to make a set of HQ gear for any classes I'm trying to level up now and I can ignore dungeon gear.
Any rich person who doesn't have crafting classes will probably do the same, so there is a market for it. Unfortunately most rich people are crafters, so it's a very small market.

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Originally Posted by MithrasInvictus

Until you start getting iLVL70+ gear, literally everything crafted is better. The HQ versions have the same stats as their dungeon equivalents, but you can meld them, which effectively makes them outclass (very easily) the dungeon drops. I'm open to debate, but I am unsure that you will be able to find an example of gear below iLVL70+ that doesn't have a better crafted counterpart. And 2* HQ crafted gear beats the ever living hell out of GC gear.

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The stats on Aetherial match HQ. The thing with Aetherial is, it often has 2 additional stats and those two additional stats don't comply with materia caps. You end up with a materia melded item but better.

Ok. Fair enough. A bit too much of a blanket statement in my part. Can we say that HQ crafted gear with materia is by-and-large superior unless you get lucky on a well-rolled piece of aetherial gear? The free aspect is nice too, I'll not argue that! I've used my share of aetherial gear leveling, but once I started making my armour and melding into it, I only ever got one drop (an aetherial mythril helmet of some sort) that was better than what I made, and it was only better because I only had 2 materia in my HQ mythril helmet.

As I recall, you stop getting pinks after 47, Aurum Vale being the last spot. Maybe from a chest during a battlecraft leve (unsure if the loot scales in level if you pump the leve level up) as well. At 50 pinks that randomly rolled great stats aren't an option anymore. Just the static stats on greens/blues compared to materia melded crafted gear.

The real 'future update' that'll be a pain is when new crafting gear comes out and we have to remeld everything.

You also get pinks in Amdapor Keep. If, you know, you can forego the speed run and actually aim at the chests.

Wot? I've yet to see a single Aetherial drop in Amdapor Keep. It's all green-quality gear.

And that's with me opening all the chests that we happened to ignore when people leave at the end. Because y'know, money. :p

It's already stated that crafters and gatherers will play a huge role in 2.1's housing and with pvp's gears. Ilvl 55 gears still sell well so you just have to find your market. Melding and crafting gears below 50 doesn't have much selling power so just focus on end game crafting since you already have 3 jobs to 50.